


Stem to His Heart

by billspilledquill



Category: Naruto
Genre: Aromantic Asexual Character, F/M, Gen, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, One-Sided Karin/Uchiha Sasuke, Platonic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:54:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25635370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billspilledquill/pseuds/billspilledquill
Summary: “Unrequited love. How novel,” Orochimaru said, chuckling over the absurdity. “What a way to go, Naruto-kun.”
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Uchiha Sasuke/Uzumaki Naruto
Comments: 10
Kudos: 133
Collections: Naruto





	Stem to His Heart

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to write a tropey fic. Here is the disastrous result.

> _I should have gone through life half awake if you'd had the decency to leave me alone. Awake intellectually, yes, and emotionally in a way; but here--" He pointed with his pipe stem to his heart; and both smiled. "Perhaps we woke up one another. I like to think that anyway._
> 
> _At times he entertained the dream. Two men can defy the world._
> 
> E.M Forster

Good, was Sasuke’s first thought over the matter.

The light had been blinding. Over the mountain, Sasuke saw Naruto for the first time since they left at whatever it was that he had left at the Valley of the End.

“Sasuke!” cried Naruto, and doubled over.

Sasuke watched him retch.

There were flowers: from afar, Sasuke could not see, nor did he care to see. Sasuke knew what this was about, had been warned about in the Academy: _a Ninja should not allow his emotions fester, or else._ In scrolls: _a Ninja should be aware of diseases such as_. _A Ninja should avoid behaviours such as_. Small petals scattered around him, and the cough subsided to a brief clear-throat.

“Naruto,” he said.

That much was clear: Naruto was dying in the stupidest way possible. Good, Sasuke thought.

*

“Unrequited love. How novel,” Orochimaru said, chuckling over the absurdity. “What a way to go, Naruto-kun.”

Kabuto was cruel in his curiosity. He adjusted his glasses, and smiled. “Who is it?” he asked. “Sakura-san?”

Orochimaru found it funny. “I’ll let you know that it’s Sasuke-kun, Kabuto.”

Kabuto bowed. “Of course, Orochimaru-sama.”

Sasuke had his Kanata out; Naruto didn’t move an inch. Orochimaru was holding his wrist, and let out a soft sigh.

“Don’t be hasty, Sasuke-kun.”

Sasuke acquiesced, and together they disappeared, Naruto’s eyes on him as he fluttered into nothingness. The coughing sounds remaining, distant in its call, before it resumed to silence. Sasuke went to train.

*

“Then why? Why you didn’t kill me?”

Sasuke looked at the petals; white, elongated stems. “It seems that I don’t need to.”

Naruto held his shoulders tight. Sasuke turned to see his knuckles growing white.

“I will bring you back,” Naruto said. “I will bring you back no matter the cost.”

Sasuke gazed at his hands, pale and still. He curled his fingers and opened them. There was nothing in his palm, only the sheets beneath it startled white and pale.

Sasuke had made an odd dream that night.

*

“It is not always romantic,” Orochimaru remarked with a smile. “You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive. That’s what you are worried about, is it, Sasuke-kun? That the Kyuubi boy might be romantically attached to you?”

“If you’re quite finished with guessing my thoughts,” said Sasuke, “I very much would like to train.”

“Hanahaki adds so much beauty to death that people assumed it must be romance,” said Orochimaru, his tongue darting out in delight, “that it must be about something uncontrollable, like fate, or something equally dazzling. They forget that humans die for all sort of things. So fragile and frail that they believe it must be something grand, overflowing to be able to die of a broken heart,” and he chuckled, “it’s easiest thing in the world, really, to die.”

Sasuke looked at him. “You refuse to be human. You decide to cheat death”

“Oh, Sasuke-kun,” Orochimaru said, amused. His slit eyes opened ever so slightly. “I hardly think it’s death that makes us human.”

*

“I do very much want to stay by your side, Sasuke,” said Karin. “If you really want me, Sasuke, I will follow you.”

“You have abilities that I need,” said Sasuke. Her arm was wound around his, her body close in a repulsive sort of way. “You are essential to our team. To our plan.”

And her eyes brightened like Sasuke’s would have brightened once. The need to follow; to belong. With her arms circling his, she cooed sweet nothings in his ears.

Sasuke stayed still, and wondered about tomorrow’s travel.

*

“She loves you!” gawked Suigetsu, laughing as if his life depended on it. “That brute loves you! Say, why do all women fall at your feet? Is it the fact that you can’t love?”

Sasuke pulled out a map and examined it.

“Or is it the way you ignore people? I am being on the receiving end of it right now and I don’t find that to be particularly arousing.”

Sasuke pointed a finger at a black dot over the scroll. “We’ll travel by water,” he dictated.

“You have to be careful, Sasuke,” said Suigetsu, trying despite himself to suppress the laughter that threatened to spill forth. “What if that woman gets that weird flower disease? You know, the one where you get sick and all. She would die and we would lose her. Didn’t you say she was crucial to our plan?”

“She won’t,” said Sasuke, rolling the map carefully. “Only idiots get that. She’s not stupid.”

Suigetsu snickered rudely. “Could’ve fooled me.”

“Anyone can fool you, Suigetsu.”

Suigetsu flashed his sharp teeth, unbothered; Sasuke knew he wouldn’t hesitate sinking them in him if Sasuke betrayed him. This was the bond he needed; this was the bond that was founded on mutual benefit rather than anything else unstable, risky; malleable. “I’m not an expert,” Suigetsu said, “but I’d say she’s quite taken with you, that woman. Are you sure there’s no risk of odd and incurable disease in our way? That would be a boring way to die, y’know, love and all.”

“She knows where to use her emotions and where not to waste them,” said Sasuke, glancing at Jugo, who was dozing off in a corner. “Get some sleep. We’ll travel by sunrise.”

*

Karin was annoying. “Do you remember, Sasuke?” she kept asking. “Do you remember when we first met?”

“No,” said Sasuke.

“You smiled at me,” she said. “Your chakra was warm.”

“How it is now?”

She released him slightly, her hold softening. “What?”

“How is my chakra now?”

Sasuke snatched a cloth to clean his Katana. Karin stayed silent.

*

A long, long time ago, Sasuke saw Naruto purge at the back door of the Ichiraku.

Sakura flushed angrily. “What are you, an elephant? I told you not to eat too much!”

“Sorry, sorry,” said Naruto, grinning weakly. “It was just too good and Kakashi-sensei was paying, so—”

“Dead-last,” whispered Sasuke.

Naruto had two hands on his knees, and just as he was about to retort, he purged again.

Sasuke cringed in disgust; Sakura yelped and turned her head. They let Naruto clean himself up. Sasuke thought it was a simple occurrence, at that time.

*

Sasuke grabbed her arm; he had the will to crush it.

“Karin,” he said slowly. “If you ever do it again, I will kill you.”

Her eyes were blown wide with fear; she swatted his hand away. “You’re serious,” she said.

“I don’t lie.”

“They are right about you,” Karin said, soothing the bruise on her arm with her left hand. “You can’t love. Your chakra… your chakra is—”

She wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

“Have you ever wanted to kiss anyone before?”

“Karin,” he warned.

“Your chakra is inhuman,” she answered. “You’re inhuman. You used to be— you used to be so—"

*

_That man_ sat there with his legs crossed.

“Otouto,” he greeted.

Sasuke struck.

It was freeing, almost, to be fighting with someone that you were destined to fight. Destiny had always been easy. His whole life had been built on this, inexplicably, on desire and fulfillment. It seemed to Sasuke that it was not revenge he sought, not something so self-aggrandizing, but sought desire in its rawest form; desire to prove that his existence did not go to waste; desire to surpass that that man one last time. Sasuke hadn’t done anything that wasn’t selfish in nature; noble in reason, but Sasuke didn’t have time for reason.

He can die after this. He can stop everything after this. It was freeing, then. It would be freeing, _now_.

“ _Disappear_ ,” said Sasuke, and laid down the rain.

And the thunders began. They roared, and obliviated everything in their path— Sasuke saw the blue-white stripes as they fell to the ground, and sizzled into nothingness.

*

A long, long time ago, when they trained by the slow glow of the moon, when they were both exhausted by fists and colourful insults, Naruto told him the truth.

“I like to eat a lot so I don’t have to eat for the rest of the day,” Naruto told him. “There wasn’t enough money. Jiji didn’t want me to spend everything. Said I have to economize.”

“It’s a little counter-productive if you throw up right after,” said Sasuke.

Naruto laughed, scratched the back of his sweaty head. “I guess I never know when to stop, huh? Sometimes I just forget.”

“Forget what?”

Naruto grinned. “That I can’t eat everything in the whole world, bastard.”

Sasuke welcomed the way the breeze caught them off-guard. They didn’t stay anything for awhile, before Sasuke, hearing the odd beat of his shoes hitting the ground, said, “Know your limit, idiot. You can’t have everything.”

Naruto just shook his head and laughed, sweat sprinkling forth. He reached out a hand.

Their fists bumped. They waved a half-heartened goodbye and went home.

*

The rain didn’t make anything disappear; whatever left of Sasuke was still left in him: the ugly intestines, the scattered remains of a heart he had no use for, pumping and bleeding all at the same time. The thunders resumed, died as everything else died around him. The rocks, the Uchiha emblem painted across the tattered granite, the man he had vowed to kill.

Sasuke fell down next to the corpse. He breathed to the rain— hoping, moulding whatever left of him into the shape of a bird taking flight. For a second, he couldn’t see, and Sasuke pretended that he disappeared, too.

*

Naruto coughed.

Beneath the bridge, the sound crackled. The lungs, the roots, Sasuke thought. They must have mingled together to become one, and the flowers blossomed at Naruto’s lips, spilling over and over.

Sakura was holding Naruto’s hand. Kakashi’s was balled into a fist, the first sprouts of electricity merging through. A lovely picture they made; a little family. Three little sheep against the big, bad wolf; the beginning of any story. A villain.

“I’ve killed Danzo,” said Sasuke. “It was a high unlike anything I’ve ever felt, like I was finally cleansing the Uchiha name of the stigma that’s dogged it for all these years.”

Naruto released her hand; his eyes fixed on him. It was the only thing that hadn’t changed, and Sasuke didn’t know whether to be angry or grateful.

“I was freeing the Uchiha from being associated with this world,” finished Sasuke with a laugh. “In a sense, it’s what Konoha has always wanted. After rejecting my clan for generations, I’m finally going to wipe it from your memories.”

“Killing us,” said Naruto, wiping the petals still clinging on his lips. “Sever the link from the Uchiha to Konoha.”

“That’s how I’ll revive my clan,” Sasuke answered readily.

“I understand,” Naruto said. “I get it.”

“You don’t get _shit_.”

Naruto didn’t shout; he didn’t cough. He muttered and gestured. Two other Naruto appeared in a cloud of smoke, and in Naruto’s hand was the slowly growing ball of chakra.

Sasuke titled his head back and laughed. “Isn’t it fitting, Naruto. Wind and lightening. Enemies. Two natures that contradict each other. I won’t hesitate this time.”

Naruto smiled. “I’m not afraid of death, Sasuke.”

Sasuke flexed his hand. Thunder will make everything disappear. “Then come.”

Naruto did.

*

Many, many years later, Sasuke said to Sakura: “I thought if anyone would get that disease amongst the three of us, it would be you.”

Sakura said: “I abandoned you.”

“That disease has nothing to do with love.”

Sakura hummed. “What do you think it is about?”

“Obsession. Insecurity. Desire to be seen.”

Sakura’s mouth curled downwards. “Is that all Naruto is for you? Is that all _I_ am to you? Some love-sick teenager? We have grown up where you couldn’t see, Sasuke-kun.”

“He has been like that with you before.”

“He’s not twelve anymore.”

“He has to make a choice.”

“He did,” she said, “he wouldn’t abandon you. Like I did. Like so many others did before me. He didn’t want that.”

“That doesn’t have to do with anything.”

Her hair had grown long once again. She wasn’t looking at him, distracted by the sakura trees above. It was spring. “Just talk to him, will you?”

*

Sasuke wanted answers.

When his family died, Sasuke thought he had the answer. When his brother died, he thought he had it firmly grasped in his palm. When the world fell apart and his brother returned with black around his eyes rather than white, with cracks along his cheeks like a broken doll, Sasuke believed that he finally had it— he would slash his heart open and store the answer in, and he would die, finally, to let the truth run out like blood. Sasuke wanted answers and people gave it to him; incomplete and hypocritical, but answers nevertheless; answers that Sasuke understood.

Madara told him about the massacre; his brother told him about the village. Sakura answered with a kunai, her eyes with the determination to kill. Kakashi didn’t answer at all, and left him alone, which was answer enough. Konoha has given his answer a long time ago, and Sasuke had given his.

“Your friend,” Naruto said. “I am your friend.”

Naruto, on the other hand, had never given him an answer at all. Anger, or something like despair shimmered inside Sasuke, and tipped him over the edge.

“You think everyone as friends,” Sasuke said. “What does friend even means to you?”

Naruto’s hands were full of petals; some fell quietly to the ground. “This, then,” Naruto said. “It means this.”

And the petals bled from his hands to a pool of blood, dripping and dripping; over and over.

Sasuke had odd dreams.

*

At the Valley of the End, Sasuke watched flowers fell. Naruto was purging full flowers now, as big as his mouth, red and bloody and just the right amount of beauty stored in a sight that Sasuke couldn’t move his eyes away. There was beauty in morbidity, and in the darkness, Sasuke saw everything in shades.

So they were going to die together, Sasuke thought.

“So we are going to die together,” said Naruto, and gagged. He coughed for so long and breathed so little that Sasuke thought that that was it before Naruto wheezed out a few petals and whispered, “Fuck.”

“I told you to know your limit,” Sasuke said, looking over the horizon. The night fell unnoticed. “You can’t own the whole world, Naruto.”

“I am not —” Naruto gritted the words out, the petals falling all over. Red petals; white with blood. He turned his face away.

“It has taken to your lungs,” observed Sasuke. “Soon you wouldn’t be able to breathe, and you will die.”

“Yeah,” Naruto said, and the same old, dull scene played out in his head: Naruto unconscious on the ground, and the rain, slithering and falling ever still, couldn’t wash anything away; the intestines, the heart, the words; Sasuke looking at him, and thinking about how if there was one thing that couldn’t die in this world, it would be him.

“I don’t fall,” Sasuke said as light fell; an irony; a sort of witness to this dance they had been forced to learn the steps of since childhood. The moon made the flowers clean of blood. “I don’t _fall_.”

But Sasuke fell for a lot of things: lies, manipulation, revenge, hatred. _Fallen_ , Konoha had said of their clan, as if there was a point where they started out unfallen, unfilled, pure like any beginning. Never once Sasuke had fallen in love; the lethal way of breaking something never to repair it—falling. Sasuke didn’t _fall_. 

“Bastard,” Naruto whispered, out of breath. He twisted, his eyes clear, pale as the shadows stayed behind him. Light had fallen all over. “Is that all that you have to say to me when I’m about to die?”

“I have known that for awhile. You aren’t exactly subtle.”

Naruto laughed, and in the excruciating pain of a bleeding arm and bruises and broken teeth, Sasuke joined him.

“Bastard,” he repeated.

“Dead-last,” Sasuke said, the chuckle softening to a sigh. “Keep that for later. I will die with you anyway.”

Naruto looked at him. Just looked at him; the world stripped bare to its only desire. Maybe it was to be seen after all. Maybe Sasuke’s whole life had been a hopeless pursuit of trying to be seen.

“I’ve lost,” said Sasuke, and waited. _To disappear_ , Sasuke thought as he watched petals flew by, some of them sticking to the blood gathered on his brows, on their severed limbs. _To die._

No, Sasuke decided. That wasn’t it at all.

*

They ended up in different rooms.

“Naruto is placed elsewhere,” Sakura explained, agitated in her white gown. “The roots have taken too much place and are crushing his lungs. We need to monitor them.” When Sakura saw his face, she misinterpreted it.

“He’ll survive,” she said.

“Why?”

Sakura froze in her steps. “What do you mean, why?”

“Why is he still alive?”

She had an angry frown, now. “Why do you ask like you are expecting him to die?”

“He was supposed to die yesterday,” Sasuke said. “He couldn’t breathe. We lost too much blood. He shouldn’t have survived.”

She kept frowning. “The roots have subsided. Just a little. It stopped before the level of his throat.”

Sasuke felt the bandages around him, and the startling pain of where his arm used to be. “I see,” he said.

She crossed her arms, her foot tapping on the floor. “Hanahnaki is not all about unrequited love,” she said, “just as the cure is not about requited love. Human emotions are complicated; an inexact science. _Soft_ science,” she said the word with a mild disgust. “We like to pretend it’s something deeper, but it’s a sickness like anything else. If the roots are starting to subside for whatever reason, then he’s going to be fine. It’s as simple as that.”

Sasuke turned his cheek. The pillow was soft enough that he can fall asleep. It seemed that Sakura had left the room. Her voice rose up after a moment.

“I remember the Academy, all of us fawning over you. You weren’t interested in anyone. I thought it was pride at first; arrogance,” Sakura said. “Then I thought maybe you were simply insecure, or that you couldn’t be bothered because you think none of us is worthy. But you still aren’t interested, are you? Not in the way that matters to most people.”

Sasuke closed his eyes, willing himself to sleep.

“He’ll survive,” she kept saying. “We’ll live in a world where both of you can survive. I will fight for it, if not for you, then for Naruto. For my own sake.”

*

Naruto didn’t leave bed for three months. Sasuke had left the village since then.

Revolution. He hadn’t changed his mind. But he had lost; Sasuke had never lied about anything, and he found no solid ground in compromise.

“Bastard,” was Naruto’s first word to him. His hair disheveled, ruffled by the wind, and he was panting as if he had ran all the way to Sound. “You didn’t even say goodbye!”

“You were in the hospital. In coma.”

Naruto huffed. “Yeah, and you could’ve waited!”

“I’m not going to stay there,” Sasuke said. “You know that.”

Naruto had his one hand on his left knee, still panting. He coughed, but there was no petals, no flowers, no morbid meaning behind it.

“I’m coming with you,” Naruto said.

“You’ve been obsessed with me since we were children.”

“Is that yes or a no?”

“It’s not about you. It’s my journey alone. It’s to atone my sins.”

Naruto sighed, exasperated. He gestured with his one arm, as tactile as ever. “Is that a yes or no, Sasuke?”

Sasuke balled his fists. “Whatever.”

Naruto rolled his eyes. “Never said it’s about me. What’s a journey without friends?”

“I thought you wanted to be Hokage.”

“ _You_ wanted to be Hokage.”

“I have lost,” Sasuke said.

Naruto’s eyes were clear as that day. As pale as any petal. “We have to much to see,” he said. “What’s to become Hokage if I haven’t seen everything first?”

But it wasn’t that either, Sasuke thought. There was pain down the empty sleeve, and Sasuke felt it too.

“You can’t shoulder everything,” Sasuke said, looking down at the bandages wrapped tightly around Naruto’s chest, a scar peaking out of his shirt.

Naruto grinned. “Just see me try.”

*

It was when they were walking down the streets of Sound when Naruto suddenly purged.

Sasuke stood by when he did; his cloak hiding him from bystanders. The retch felt like it meant to rip Naruto from his own heart, and dissolve into nothing.

“Slow down,” Sasuke said. “Slow, go slow.”

They settled down next to a tree, sitting like children would sit. They used to sit like that after training, but it was different. This wasn’t the past.

“When did you get it?”

Naruto swung his head, back and forth, humming. “About the time you left.”

“It should’ve killed you a long time ago.”

“Fuck you.” Naruto laughed. “I bet you were happy about it. I was going to die so _stupidly_. Fits your perception of me pretty well, bastard.”

Sasuke put his hand on the ground and felt the grass tickling his palm. “You are hard to kill,” he replied eventually.

“I am,” Naruto said, a pleased smile on his face. “Look at where it got me now.”

Sasuke’s hand tightened around a stem of grass. He plucked it. “Is that why you chased after me?” he asked. “To cure yourself?”

“It’s not a disease,” Naruto retorted mildly; his eyes closed. “I know that everyone says so, but it’s not. It doesn’t hurt anymore than it did before. My feelings are still the same. It’s just how I feel, and my body responded,” then he laughed. “The flowers are little weird, though. I mean, I’m a grown man.”

“They are not pretty decorations. They are there to kill you.”

“Huh-huh. Right.”

Sasuke felt irritation prickle his skin. “You are inadequately unafraid of death. You are not fully healed—"

“ _And still I come after you_ ,” added Naruto with a comically sombre voice, imitating Sasuke’s. “I don’t mind it. You won’t live without me, anyway.”

Sasuke gritted his teeth, annoyed. “I won’t _kiss_ you, Naruto.”

Naruto sat up; his eyes opened. “Why would I want that?”

“I have never wanted to kiss anyone,” he said.

Naruto just blinked.

“I won’t marry you; I will not do anything of the kind.”

“Sure,” Naruto said, as though he didn’t understand, as though he had never understood. “Alright.”

They stayed like that for awhile. They could stay like that for a long time; they could be fighting. They could do anything. In his dreams Sasuke had thought about defying the world. The two of them.

Sasuke never found it hard to admit it. _You’re my closest friend. You have become my closest friend_. Sasuke lived with desire, and desired the world. 

“I love you,” Sasuke said, watching the village spread out before them; the view of the world condensed in a single desire. Before them, the children rushed through, laughing, battling, pursuing.

Naruto laughed a little, and clasped his shoulder. “I always wanted it,” Naruto said. “To live with you, to be your friend. I still do.”

“I understand,” Sasuke said. “I get it.”

Naruto reached out his hand. Their fists bumped.

“I know,” Naruto said. “I know you do.”

Good, Sasuke thought, and laughed.

*

Sometimes Naruto woke up with a scream.

“I dreamt that you left again,” Naruto would tell him honestly, and the world fell asleep in their eyes, only to wake again in the morning with eyes pale like petals. Stems took ground, and roots blossomed.

“You have such odd dreams,” Sasuke would say. “Go to sleep.”

Naruto would laugh. “You always look so different at night,” he would answer every time. “I don’t know how to say it. You are so—”

*

No, Sasuke decided. It wasn’t about death at all.


End file.
